'Gossip Girl' recap: 'Inspector Chevalier! Of Course!'

On
"Gossip Girl": On Serena's last shoulder-padded day in Paris, Lily phones to let her know that they've discovered a possible Chuck Bass corpse in the river. So now she has to ID her brother's body, head back to NYC,
and keep Blair from finding out/melting down before she's back in the States. For a girl who literally does nothing all day, as like her entire calling, that is quite a task list.

Though Chuck's dead for now, Henry is fine! Hot as
hell and living it up with that Veela girl in some kind of French bohemian fantasy world of wine and bicycles and baguettes and what have you. Perhaps she is evil/mysterious; certainly Henry walks with a cane. Blair's taxi almost runs him down, causing them both to emote. Blair of course assumes that dressing like Peer Gynt and running around with a cane and amnesia is some kind of romantic scheme to get B back; it is at this point that dressing like Peer Gynt and running around with a cane and amnesia becomes a romantic scheme to get B back. Or something. You know how Chuck is.

S tracks him down but he keeps grumbling "There is no Chuck Bass" and wobbling away on his cane like he's about to grant some wishes. Finally he sends some official-looking paperwork S's way, maybe now she owns the Empire Hotel or some s***, you know how this show works. Maybe it's Georgina's somehow. Serena freaks out about this while dressed like a clown, and Blair ignores her to date her hot prince, even though he was right to dump her gold-digging ass last week and she doesn't even like him anyway and also Chuck. It's fairly compelling, this bit.

This is also the point where Serena begins consulting with Scotland Yard or something, it's so amazing, she and her new friend
Inspector Chevalier are like solving crimes and resolving complex issues of identity theft at Harry Winston and like forensically reconstructing the night of Chuck's shooting and... we love this show so f***ing much, you guys. This actually happened. Serena is a crimefighter.
A fighter of crime.

Finally S drags Blair to a really beautiful scene between B and Chuck on this walkway where she talks him into being Chuck Bass again, and it's so beautiful and wonderful and they have this amazing conversation about his pretend amnesia and the shooting and how she's not in love with him anymore. She makes a compelling argument for the UES, though, and he eventually takes up his name and brings Eva along for the ride. And B leaves Prince Louis with a fairytale shoe, returning free of the Bass Factor and totally triumphant.

Back home, while Lily and Rufus go gaga for Milo, Juliet jumps into the irrelevant Nate/Dan/Serena triangle with both feet, sending Dan off with Vanessa and eventually seducing Nate himself away from Serena, so that by the time S gets back home nobody really cares whom she chose. Of course, this is all part of some seriously evil planning by Juliet, who is working on somebody's mysterious behalf...
To destroy Serena from the ground up!

...Poppy? Gabriel? Both? Pete Fairman people? That boring girl from Texas? Aaron Rose somehow? Dr. van der Woodsen trying to isolate her for some reason? Georgina now having a split personality and doing schemes she doesn't even know about? (And where the eff is she?) Nelly Yuki?

OMG is Nelly Yuki having a lesbian relationship with Katie Cassidy? Lucky old so-and-so.
Photo credit: The CW